


Being Superman

by rougeandtonic



Category: Smallville
Genre: Angst, Enemies, First Time, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 14:38:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2391989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rougeandtonic/pseuds/rougeandtonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark wakes up in a world where he is Superman and Superman is dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Being Superman

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 12/6/2006

Clark stepped out of Lex's office. He’d made an effort to talk and Lex had been polite but distant. Clark knew he hadn't forgiven him for all the lies. Well, Clark hadn't forgiven Lex, either. There were so many things to be angry about: immoral business practices, betrayal, spying on him...

But it wasn't like he had anyone else to talk to. Lana wasn’t speaking to him. Chloe had been weird lately. And Pete… his former best friend hadn’t exactly been there for him this year.

If he tried to talk to his parents, they would just say that growing up is hard. Wait until he got older and things would be easier then.

"Well, it's easy for them to say, isn't it?" Clark found himself in the cave, ranting to the A.I. "But I've still got to deal with my life now."

The A.I. blinked in what Clark interpreted as a sympathetic manner.

"I wish I was in the future now. I have no one to talk to. I'm not allowed to trust anyone. If I was grown up already, I could skip all this," Clark continued. "I mean--"

"That can be arranged," the A.I. said in its monotonous voice.

Clark jerked to attention. "Wait, no, I didn't..." He thought for a second. "You could really do that?"

The A.I. was silent. Not even a blink. Clark sighed. "I thought not."

 

Clark ate dinner dejectedly, and kept waiting for his parents to ask him what was wrong. But they were too busy discussing some landscaping decision about the farm. He was sure they'd notice something was up when he skipped dessert. Ok, when he only had one slice of pie. But they continued talking, completely oblivious to his dark mood.

"I'm going for a run," he announced, after speeding through the dishes.

"Ok, Clark, just don't stay out too late," his father said.

Clark did stay out late. He did three circuits around the States, coast to coast, hoping to wear himself out so he would sleep that night. His parents were asleep when he sped into bed at 2 AM. Sighing, he pulled his covers over and tried to sleep.

 

He woke up the next morning to bright early dawn light. Rubbing his eyes, he checked his alarm clock. 6:46. Only. Wait. That wasn't his alarm clock. It was some kind of holographic projection over the night table. The night table was also not his. Nor were the white gauzy curtains through which the sunlight was coming in.

Clark bolted upright and threw off the covers (also white and also not his). In the process, he simultaneously realized that he was naked and managed to hit someone on the other side of the bed. He yanked the covers back up and turned to face... Lex?

He started to recoil in horror, only to realize he didn't have much of the bed to recoil to. So he settled for staring in horror. Lex was just waking up and didn't look happy to see him in his bed. Clark couldn't blame him.

"Um, hi, Lex," he said. Lex's eyes widened perceptibly, and Clark rushed on, "I'm sure there's an explanation for this..."

"I'm sure there is." Lex's voice was smooth and kind of cold. He elegantly pulled off the covers and stood up. Clark's brain registered a second too late that Lex. Was. Also. Naked. He quickly averted his eyes. Then looked back. Lex was walking through a doorway, and Clark could see his ass muscles flexing. Nicely toned ass muscles.

This was no time to be looking at ass muscles! Clark shook himself. Lex was gone for a second. Time to get dressed. He glanced around wildly. There were clothes scattered on the floor, a pair of jeans and a button-down shirt. He didn't recognize them but they fit when he tried them on.

He looked around the room again, hoping he could face this situation with a little more sanity with clothes on. Yes, definitely not his room. Though it didn't really look like Lex's either. It was stark, decorated in all white and black lines. Clark switched to x-ray vision to scan through the walls.

"You're still here," Lex said, cutting through Clark's scan before he could make out anything but the fact that they were high up in some building. Clark looked at him and gulped. Lex was wearing a robe now, but it was hanging loosely open in the front. He forced himself to focus somewhere higher than where his eyes wanted to go. There was a thick black glove on Lex’s right hand. That was odd. And his face was a bit narrower and harsher than Clark remembered it. He looked as if he'd aged ten years overnight.

Clark suddenly remembered his conversation with the A.I. yesterday. Shit.

Lex was still looking at him, probably waiting for a response. "I, uh, need to go," Clark said, crossing his fingers that Lex wouldn't demand an explanation for him showing up naked in his bed. But fate was on his side today because Lex just said: “Go.”

"Right," Clark said, and headed for the door. "I'll see you around."

"You can't go out the front door, Kent."

Clark turned around, confused by the hostility in his voice. "Well, what do you want me to do? I can't just go out the window." Clark laughed a little awkwardly.

Lex just stared at him like he was a newly discovered species of Moron. Then he said, "Mercy will take you out the back."

 

Mercy was almost as tall as Clark, lean and muscled with steely dark eyes. She took him down a back elevator to the ground floor and out onto the sidewalk. Clark looked back and forth. This was definitely a Metropolis street, unless Smallville had exploded in the last--how many years?

"Um, this is going to sound like a strange question," Clark said to Mercy, who was standing behind him impatiently. "But what's the date today?"

"December 6," she said crisply.

"And, uh, the year?"

She narrowed her eyes at the question. "2016."

Clark nodded slowly and opened his mouth to ask another question, but she was gone.

* * *

Clark found a wallet in his jeans pocket, a driver’s license that established that these clothes were indeed his and enough cash to hail a cab. He directed the driver to the address on the license.

Apartment 19 was locked, and he didn't have any keys in his pocket. He tried to use his strength to turn the lock but he ended up ripping the whole doorknob out of the door. He went inside.

So, he thought, this is my future home. He put the doorknob on a table near the door and stood in the middle of the apartment for a while, taking stock. It wasn’t quite Spartan but not overwhelmingly homey, either. There were pictures on the wall, actual artwork, it looked like. A black and white photo of Metropolis from the sky. Small kitchen. Living room with a battered black couch. Bedroom with a single bed. His future self, lived alone, obviously. This was a relief, considering his current predicament, but also a disappointment. It was 2016, he was thirty years old. He would have hoped he would have been married by now. It was disappointing that in all these years he still hadn't found the one to share his life with.

He found the bathroom and spent a good five minutes staring at himself in the mirror. Was he taller? No. Probably not. But he looked bigger, wider in the shoulders. He was more muscular though there still wasn’t an ounce of fat on his body. His face had changed. Not a lot, but perceptibly. He'd aged as much as Lex, he supposed. He looked grown-up. Like a man. He gave the mirror his best confident glare. He wondered if that worked now. It never had before.

He looked through the apartment for any clues as to where he might work. There was a cell phone on his nightstand. He clicked through the contacts. Lots and lots of names, but he barely recognized any. Chloe and Lana weren't even in there. Neither was Lex, just a listing for LexCorp.

What was Lex thinking about him waking up naked in his bed? He hadn't seemed shocked, but he hadn't been happy about it either. Clark felt his cheeks heat up. No, not thinking about that right now. There were more important things to take care of.

Perry White, he recognized that contact, and wondered how he'd made the list. And someone named Lois Lane was apparently speed-dial 1. That was a clue right there. Maybe she was his girlfriend? Didn't Chloe have a cousin named Lois?

Clark looked up, startled, as the door vehemently, banged open.

"What the fuck's going on, Kent? Did you get robbed or something?" The woman who entered trained a sharp glare around his apartment and then back at him. She was about his age now and dark-haired. She was carrying two cups of coffee, a briefcase, car keys and a cell phone. Clark wasn't sure how she was keeping it all balanced.

"I, uh, no." What was she talking about? Oh, the door knob... "It just broke this morning."

"Well, you better call maintenance. In this neighborhood, I'd give all your possessions about an hour, tops." She tilted her head, reconsidering. "Maybe three for your couch."

Who was this? She obviously knew him well...

"What's wrong? Rough night? You looked like you slept on the floor."

Clark startled, and looked down at himself. Sure, his clothes were a little rumpled, and, well, he wasn't entirely sure they were his own. "I, uh..."

She rolled her eyes. "No time for explanations. We're already late." She was suddenly looking at him very closely. "No wonder you look different. Where are your glasses, Kent?"

He looked at her, puzzled. Glasses? He wore glasses? She shoved the coffee cups into his hands and moved past him into the bedroom. She handed him a pair of thick-framed glasses and took the coffee back.

"Figures you wouldn't be able to find them unless you were actually wearing them. You never take them off anyways."

He put them on, confused. Never took them off? They didn't even seem to have a prescription.

The woman shoved one of the coffees back at him, "Come on, Kent. Hurry up."

He followed her down the stairs. On their way out, she banged on one of the front apartments and yelled, "Fix the doorknob in apartment 19. If it's not locked when Kent comes back expect to be sued for whatever property's stolen!"

"Do you think he heard you?" Clark asked as they left the building without waiting for an answer.

"He heard me," the woman said, and stopped in front of a conservative gray car. "Get in."

 

Clark wondered where they were going as they sped (well, as much as you could call it speeding) through rush hour Metropolis streets. Did she work with him? He wished he at least knew her name.

They were stopped in traffic and the radio was on and it was playing a melancholy song. Not the kind of music Clark would have pictured this woman listening to, but she didn’t make a move to change it. When the announcer came on, he said, “And that was Fly No More from the Tribute to a Hero CD available wherever CD’s are sold. Remember all profits go to …“

"Fucking move, already,” Lois grumbled at the traffic.

* * *

When they finally got downtown, they parked and walked up to a big roped in area between high-rise office buildings. It was filled with people and plastic chairs and a large sign that said, “Superman Memorial Unveiling.” The woman showed her press badge announced that they were Lois Lane and Clark Kent with the Daily Planet. Finally a name! That got them assigned seats and they made their way through the crowd into the square. There was a raised platform in the center and behind it a large object covered by a tarp. Hanging from the buildings surrounding the square were huge reproductions of photographs of a dark-haired man in a skin-tight blue suit. That must be Superman, he thought. And the next thought – That’s a Kryptonian symbol. The same one as on his spaceship. Superman was a Kryptonian?

Lois tugged him through the crowd as he stared at the blown-up photos. After an interval, they shimmered and changed. Superman was standing with his arms crossed in front of a crowd. Then he was hovering above the ground – flying? – arm stretched in a fist pointed upward.

Lois found their seats. Clark still hadn’t taken his eyes off the photos. A Kryptonian had come to earth and, judging from the latest picture of him fighting a huge tentacled monster, had helped people?

Another photo faded in, a framed close-up of Superman’s face. Clark stared in horror. The hair, the eyes, the jaw, the nose, the nostrils – he was staring at his own face. He glanced around at the crowd. No one seemed to notice.

“Superman,” the screen read. “Savior to Metropolis and the World. 2008-2016.”

Clark had woken up in a world where he was Superman and Superman was dead.

“Look!” Lois grabbed his arm and Clark jerked to attention. “I can’t believe they chose him of all people!”

Clark followed her eyes to the stage, where a bald man in a black suit was ascending the podium.

“Lex?”

“What a joke,” Lois said.

The close-up photo of Superman faded into a live close-up of Lex. The crowd silenced.

“My fellow citizens of Metropolis,” Lex’s voice was smooth but deeper coming from the booming speakers. The captian on the screen read, “Senator Luther.” “Two months have passed since the day we lost a hero, a savior. A friend.”

“Friend?” Lois snorted next to him. “This is fucking bull-shit.”

Clark couldn’t wrench his eyes away from the man on the podium as he continued his eulogy. Was it his imagination or was Lex looking directly at him? “Superman is not dead,” Lex pronounced and Clark’s heart stopped for a second. “He lives on is all of us.” Lex stepped aside and the tarp was lifted off a larger-than-life steel-gray statue of Superman, posed angled in mid-flight. Music started playing and an aged singer stepped up to the stage. The crowd cheered, though Clark could hear sobs through the applause.

It was too much for him. “Lois,” he said. “I have to go.”

 

Next thing he knew he was halfway to Smallville. It just got more confusing the more he thought about it. He was Superman, but Superman was dead. He was also Clark Kent, and since no one had seemed particularly surprised to see him, he could only assume that he was alive.

“Clark! What a surprise!” Martha was cooking in the kitchen when he came in through the back door. He wondered if he should have knocked, but she hugged him tightly.

When he pulled back, he saw her hair was streaked with gray and there were lines at her eyes and mouth. She was older, too, but still familiar.

“What are you making?” he asked, his stomach getting the better of him.

“Oh, just some macaroni. There’s plenty for two.” She gestured to the stove. “So, what’s the occasion, honey? I haven’t seen you since…”

“Mom?”

“It’s just good to see you’re okay,” she said.

“Of course I’m okay, Mom,” he said, though he wasn’t too sure about the ‘of course.’ Who knows what had happened. “I have something to talk to you about, though. Where’s Dad? I’d like to tell both of you at once.”

She took a step back. “Clark...”

“What?”

“Your father’s been dead for eight years,” she said. Her eyes hardened. “I think you better tell me what’s going on.”

Clark sank down into a kitchen chair. “Eight years? Wow, I… I never…”

Martha turned off the stove and covered the pot. She turned back to Clark, arms folded.

“Mom, I don’t remember. I don’t know what happened in any of the last thirteen years.”

“You have amnesia?” She didn’t sound convinced.

“No, I don’t remember it because I didn’t live it. I’m seventeen and last night I was frustrated and I told the A.I. that I wanted to be grown up already and this morning I woke up in Lex Luthor’s bed, and I’m thirty and a reporter for the Daily Planet and also Superman? Only Superman’s dead and nothing makes sense.”

Martha sank into a chair across from him. “What is the last thing you remember?”

“It was December 5, 2003. I’m a junior in high school. You and Dad are—“ What was that conversation Clark had barely paid attention to last night? “Landscaping the yard, I think.”

“Clark—“

“You have to believe me,” he said desperately. “I have no one else to go to. How can I—“ He was interrupted by a screech of tires, glass breaking and people screaming. He stood up abruptly. “There’s a car accident close by. I think it’s just on the road. I’ll be right back.”

“Clark—“ he heard her call as he superspeeded away.

 

Clark was staunching the wounds of an unconscious man. A young woman kept saying over and over how sorry she was. He looked up and saw his mother approaching through the smoke of the two totaled cars.

“I called an ambulance,” she said. “It’ll be here shortly.”

Clark nodded and turned his attention back to the man.

 

When it was over, he got in the passenger seat of his Mom’s – wait, was this was his Mom’s? It didn’t look like a new car but it wasn’t any model he recognized, either.

“Clark,” Martha said as they drove down the country road. “I’m proud of you.”

“What?” Clark said. “No lecture on using my powers more discretely?”

She looked pained. “You are a teenager, aren’t you? I have a lot to tell you.”

“You believe me now?”

“Honey, the Clark I know wouldn’t have saved that man.”

 

The macaroni and cheese was beyond repair but Martha had a fruit pie for tomorrow’s bake sale in her fridge and she cut Clark a generous slice. As he ate, she talked.

She told him about college, getting his first apartment, his job at the Daily Planet, being partnered with Lois. His decision to become Superman. After that it was a story of people saved, disasters averted, stories written, crime lords put in jail… She brought out an overstuffed scrapbook of all his bylines and articles about Superman.

“In the end,” she said. “I think you were tired. And lonely. And you saw that people weren’t always so good and started wondering why you were saving them.”

Clark looked at her in surprise. “Do you believe that?” he asked.

“That people aren’t all good?” She sighed. “Certainly. But I believe everyone has the potential to do good.”

Clark couldn’t help but think of Lex. “So what happened?” he asked. The scrapbook ended two months back.

She looked away, as if remembering. “It was a monster from another dimension, at least so the papers speculated. But it doesn’t matter where it came from, only that it was stronger than you and could hurt you. The battle lasted days, or maybe it just seemed that long. In the end you killed it, but not before it landed a devastating blow.”

“People think it killed me.”

“Everyone thought you were dead,” she said sharply. “You should have seen – I won’t describe it. You’ll have to find that article somewhere else. The world was all mourning you. I was mourning you. But somehow you made it to the Fortress and were healed. Seven days after I mourned your death, you appeared on this doorstep. It was a miracle.” She paused. Clark reached out and took her hand. “I said you had to go public, show the world you were alive and let them stop mourning. But you told me then, Superman is dead. Let him rest in peace.”

“And so he is,” Clark finished. “I wonder what he thinks when he hears all those tribute songs on the radio. Man, when I made that wish, I thought everything would be easier in the future. But now I’m lonelier and living more lies than ever!”

“You should get some sleep, honey,” Martha said, patting his hand. “This will all seem more manageable in the morning.”

Clark looked at the clock. It was well past one. “You’re right,” he said.

“Your room is still made up for you,” she said, standing and gathering the plates.

Clark glanced wistfully upstairs but shook his head. “Thanks, but I should sleep at the apartment. I need to get used to living this new life.”

 

He spent most of the remaining night going through the scrapbook. For the most part, it was the same article over and over. Superman saved a baby from a burning building. Superman thwarted a robbery on 34th street. Superman saved thousands from a tsunami in Asia. And then there was always the gushing quote from the people he'd rescued. It was awkward, how much people admired him. He'd gotten that a little bit in Smallville, once in a while when he'd saved someone. But not anything like this. No wonder Superman always left suddenly and couldn't be reached for comment.

There was even the occasional quote from Lex Luthor. Usually a complaint about property destruction or about Superman violating civil rights or being a menace to mankind. Lex really didn't like Superman. Clark supposed that was only natural for a man of unscrupulous business practices. He would have liked to have been surprised that he and Lex had become such bitter enemies, but he had to admit to himself that even before he came to the future he'd known where this all was going.

There were other articles, too. He found the ones with his bylines most interesting. They were mostly investigative reports with Lois, the kind of thing he and Chloe had done in high school, but on a larger scale. Between his reporting and Superman's interference, Clark guessed that he must have made a lot of enemies among the criminal elements in Metropolis.

The strangest part was reading articles he himself had written about Superman. He wondered what his older self had been thinking as he wrote them. Did he ever get used to being two people?

Well, considering how it ended, he supposed he never did.

 

He must have fallen asleep on the couch because he woke up to Lois banging on his font door. He super-speeded dressed but unfortunately couldn’t shower at that speed so hoped he looked okay.

“Kent, what took you so long?” she growled, even though he had answered between her fifth and sixth knocks. She handed him a coffee unceremoniously. “Let’s go.”

He made it through the day at work by following Lois’ lead. He was glad he didn’t have to write anything himself. In fact, the most he did was correct some of Lois’ punctuation while she growled at him. By the end of the day, though, he’d made up his mind. He couldn’t stay here. He had to get back home.

* * *

But the A.I. was gone. In fact, the whole cave had seemed to have caved in long ago. Clark x-rayed the area and when he didn’t trust that, he started pulling up the boulders. He didn’t find any remains of the Kryptonian technology.

 

“Oh, it was years ago,” Martha said. She’d offered Clark some more pie but he was too distraught to eat more than one – okay, two – slices. She smiled at him. “I haven’t see you eat like that in years.”

“So it’s gone?” Clark asked, refusing to consider the implications of that yet.

“Oh, no. It’s in the Arctic. It seems to have created this whole ice palace. You call it the Fortress of Solitude.”

Clark set upon his second slice of pie in relief.

“You’re going to go back, aren’t you?” Martha asked.

“I have to,” he said, chewing. “I can’t stay here. This isn’t my life. I never even really meant to ask the A.I. to send me here in the first place. And I definitely didn’t think it could do it!”

“Was your life back then really so bad?”

“No, it wasn’t. It’s just—I was lonely. I wanted to have someone to talk to, who I could trust, but everyone kept disappointing me. You and Dad were always saying that when I grew up, I’d find someone. But I guess not, huh?”

“Clark, it’s more complicated than that.”

“Is it? Really?” he asked. She was silent. “What if there isn’t anyone out there for me? I mean, did he” –meaning the other Clark—“ever share his secret with anyone?”

Martha shook her head slowly. “Not that I know of. Never voluntarily.”

They were silent for a minute, and then Clark pushed his plate away. “Well, at least I learned something. The alter-ego superhero identity obviously doesn’t work. I’m not going to try to be Superman this time around. And I’ll definitely know not to trust Lex, now that I know how things are going to work out.”

 

Wind howled outside the fortress, but inside it was still and the cold didn’t touch him. Sparkling icy spires rose from the ground and the walls of the ice cavern shimmered like mirrors you couldn’t quite see yourself it.

He couldn’t see any buttons to push or any keyholes, and he didn’t have a key anyways. So he just called out, “Hello?”

“Kal-El,” the A.I. said in surround sound. Clark turned around, trying to locate its source. “Your psychic signature has changed.”

“I’m from the past. Don’t you remember sending me here?”

“My memory bank has no record of that.”

Clark continued as if he hadn’t heard. “I want you to send me back.”

“Where did you come from?”

“From the past! From 2003!”

“Not from this past.”

“How can you not remember? You just sent me here two days ago.”

“I had no part in your arrival here.”

“Well, can you just send me back, then? To December 6, 2003?”

“I can’t trace the place you came from, so I can’t send you back there,” the A.I. insisted.

Clark continued to argue with it, but the A.I. stood infuriatingly firm. “There’s no way I can get home then?” he finally asked.

“You are home, Kal-El.”

“You mean, I’m stuck here?”

“It would appear so.”

Clark’s frustrated screams echoed through the ice cavern.

 

Days passed. Clark made it by faking it way through, lying about things he should have known, and learning. His despair began to verge on insanity. How could he accept that he’d just lost thirteen years of his life? But he had to. If the A.I. couldn’t send him home, how could he possibly get back?

He mourned his father, and how abruptly he’d left. He mourned the loss of whatever had been left of his childhood. He hated the future Clark’s apartment. It seemed more barren and colorless with each passing day. At night he lay awake listening to the sound of mice and cockroaches in the walls.

But one of the worst parts was the constant reminders of Superman, this great superhero he was supposed to have been. From songs on the radio to tearful interviews on television to the new announcers bemoaning the rise in crime since his death.

Once, upon hearing that, he turned to Lois and said, “If it’s so bad now that he’s gone, wouldn’t it have been better if he’d never come in the first place?”

He knew it had been a mistake to say that when Lois trained on him the most menacing look he’d ever seen. “How dare you say that? He might be gone, but all the good he did remains. Would the 650 people he saved from the train crash in ’11 be better off? Or the 3,000 people he rescued from the Asian tsunami? Or, I don’t know, how about the two or three times he saved the entire fucking world? Does that mean nothing now?”

Harder than the reminders of Superman, though, was ignoring the cries for help. He helped people one or two times when he could be discreet, but he could think of no way to be discreet about zipping across the city and rescuing an old man from a burning apartment building or stopping an armed robber on 74th street. He tried to get better at tuning out his superhearing.

 

“You want to see Lex Luthor?” the receptionist repeated incredulously.

“It’s important,” Clark said. He was pretty sure the senator-to-be wasn’t taking interviews from reporters, and he wasn’t sure why Perry had chosen him to try to get a quote on the latest robotics strike, except he must have liked seeing him fail. 

“Mister—“

“Kent,” he repeated. “Clark Kent.”

“Mr. Kent, Mr. Luthor is a busy man with a busy schedule. He does not take drop-in appointments off the street.”

“I know, but do you think you could just tell him—“

The receptionist opened her mouth (Clark was pretty sure to tell him to stop wasting her time) when a woman cut in between them.

“It’s okay, Mrs. Hatworth. Mr. Kent is coming with me.”

Mrs. Hatworth just closed her mouth and nodded. Clark looked up at the woman who had intervened on his behalf. She was tall and blonde and reminded him of Mercy in the armed-to-the-teeth-in-ways-you-can’t-see kind of way. He followed her into an elevator. Was he supposed to recognize her? She had obviously known who he was. He decided not to make a fool of himself trying to introduce himself.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

She pushed a button and didn’t deign to reply.

 

They disembarked on the 99th floor. The receptionist ignored Clark as he sat down in a very expensive leather chair in the waiting room and waited. It wasn’t a normal waiting room. There were no magazines or television to keep him occupied, only the tapping of the receptionist’s keys. He waited some more. He checked his watch.

An older man emerged from the room beyond. The door closed behind him. Clark waited patiently another minute.

Finally the receptionist said, “Mr. Luthor will see you now.”

Clark stood, wiped his sweaty palms on his suit before realizing that that probably wasn’t proper decorum, and walked in.

 

Lex was sitting at his desk but he stood up and walked around it when Clark entered.

“Mr. Luthor—“ Clark said, figuring from what all else he’d witnessed that they probably weren’t on first name basis anymore. Actually, come to think of it, only his mom had called him Clark his whole time here in the future.

“What did we agree about front doors, Mr. Kent?” Luthor said. It was the chill of his voice more than his words that made Clark remember that this was not his Lex. This Lex was hard in places Clark hadn’t never even noticed he had been soft.

“I’m sorry,” Clark said, but didn’t quite understand what he was apologizing for. Was there another entrance he was supposed to use? Or was that a hint that he wasn’t supposed to visit at all? “I just—“

“Remember,” Lex said, walking toward him. Clark took an involuntary step backwards. Lex had definitely intensified his predatory walk in the last thirteen years. It didn’t feel as benign here as it had in Lex’s office in the castle. “You were the one who didn’t want this.”

Clark took another step backwards and found himself against the wall. In fact, he really missed Lex’s old office. It had had its own kind of comfort and familiarity to it. This one was all cold lines and black and whites.

Lex took another step forward, all about invading Clark’s personal space. He was close enough to kiss – and, whoah, did Clark just have that thought? But nothing could have prepared Clark for what happened next.

Lex suddenly dropped to his knees and forcefully opened Clark’s fly.

“What—!” Clark exclaimed. What the hell was going on? Lex was – It almost looked like he was going to – No. This wasn’t happening. This was a hallucination. A dream. A fantasy. He’d had fantasies like this before. He could admit that. Just they’d taken place in completely different circumstances. He tried to calm down his breathing.

All thoughts of relaxing, though, went out the window when Lex suddenly had his cock in his mouth. His cock, which had not been entirely unresponsive up until now, surged to life rather quickly.

Wow. Wow. Wow. No one had ever even come close to doing this to him before. It was nothing like anything – the warmth, the sucking, the tongue. And this was Lex! He’d never seen his bald head from quite this angle before. Lex. His cock was in Lex’s mouth.

He scrambled for something on the wall to hold on to, but couldn’t find anything. His head banged back and he was pretty sure went through the plaster but he didn’t care because he was coming. So. Hard.

Suddenly it was over and he was spent and the world was growing more confusing every second that Lex’s mouth was no longer around his cock. Especially since Lex was standing up and grabbing his head and crushing his lips against his and his tongue—Lex was kissing him. He tasted like cum. Clark’s cum. Gross! Clark flinched away. Lex finally backed up.

His expression was as hard as a fortress wall. “I can understand your aversion,” Lex said coldly. “You taste like lies.”

Clark could feel his jaw dropping. “Lex—“

Lex was back at his desk now and he must have done something because his bodyguard Mercy was coming through the door, training a gun on him. Clark felt a little queasy.

“Care to explain, lover, or shall I lay out the evidence for you?”

As Mercy got closer, he felt worse. His veins started to clench up in pain. The pain told him what his instincts hadn’t: Those were Kryptonite bullets. Lex knew.

“How long have you known?” Clark asked nervously.

“I wasn’t sure until just now, when you came as fast as a teenage boy.” There was a cruel gleam in his eye. Clark flushed. He didn’t know he’d come that fast, and he wasn’t sure how that told Lex he was Superman. “A week ago, you overslept in my bed, and then you asked Mercy what year it was. You’ve been using your powers indiscriminately. I have photos, if you’d like to see them. You have no idea the expense I’ve gone to to keep those out of the papers. You’ve visited Smallville twice, had long visits with Martha—something you haven’t done in years…”

As Lex continued, Clark realized, this wasn’t about him being Superman. Lex acted like that was old news. This was about him pretending to be Clark. And obviously Lex’s stalkerish tendencies hadn’t diminished these past thirteen years.

“You tore up the remains of the caves, you—“

“Lex, I’m seventeen years old,” Clark blurted out. Both Lex and Mercy stared at him.

Ok, perhaps not the wisest tactic, since Clark was pretty sure Lex would find some way to use it against him, but given the Kryptonite bullets trained on him and that Lex already knew about his powers, it couldn’t have been the worst option. Maybe the truth, for once, would set him free.

“Seventeen years old?” Lex repeated. Clark nodded. “I’m afraid I’m going to need you to elaborate.”

“I’m from the past,” he began, and then told his story. Even with Lex’s skeptical-verging-on-hostile stare, it felt good to unload the burden of the story. He wished he could just tell everyone and stop pretending. “And so, I’m stuck here. I can’t go back.”

Lex stared at him for a long moment and then broke into hysterical laughter.

“What is it?” Clark asked, a little irritated that Lex found his predicament so hilarious.

“When you were seventeen I would have given anything to have you,” he answered, his laughter slowly coming under control. “And now, thirteen years later, I have.”

Clark bristled at that. “You didn’t give me much of a choice. You just shoved me against the wall and unzipped my pants before I even knew what was going on!” As soon as he said that, he flushed, having forgotten that Mercy was in the room. He glanced at her. Her face was expressionless.

“Don’t try to tell me you didn’t want it.” Lex smirked. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a four o’clock appointment. Mercy will drive you home.”

 

“Do you think Lex is gay?” Clark asked Lois the next day after a long, confusing night of soul-searching in which nothing had been figured out except he was pretty sure now why he’d woken up in Lex’s bed the other morning. He was such an idiot! And he’d even mentioned it to his mom! He still blushed thinking about it.

“There were rumors in his youth. Certain indiscretions.” Lois grinned. “But I think his wife would be rather disappointed if he was. Where’d you get that idea?”

His wife?! Clark’s fork dropped with a clang onto his porcelain plate. He steadied it and glanced around. It wasn’t a terribly nice bistro, but it was the kind of place where sound carried and people didn’t just go around banging silverware around. But Lex was married?

 

He spent the night on his laptop, poring over online news archives. There were a lot of articles about Lex Luthor, but he could read fast and he read everything he could find, dating back to 2003. Most were LexCorp press releases of some sort or another, others were high society functions, gossip columns, a random quote here or there. He’d been married twice since Smallville. This latest marriage of three years was set to outlast all the others combined. Juliana Marxman was beautiful, as Clark had known she would be, and he felt a twinge of jealousy he knew he shouldn’t feel staring at pictures of the two of them together. There was also an article about Lex’s treatment for a rare form of hand cancer – which explained the glove. A lawsuit filed against the Daily Planet naming him and Lois as defendants, which had ultimately been dropped. Wars of words between him and Superman. Recently, there were a lot of articles about his senate campaign, which he’d won just a month ago after a corruption scandal involving his opponent had been broken by the Inquisitor.

 

“You’re married!” Clark exclaimed by way of greeting when Mercy led him into the penthouse. She left him in the dining room, where Lex was sitting at a long, broad table with his laptop. A plate of dinner rested untouched at his side. Clark noted that, yes, Lex was indeed wearing a wedding ring. He’d just been too distracted the last two times he saw him up close to notice.

“I don’t have time for this,” Lex said wearily. “Do you have any idea how much paperwork is involved in transferring over the assets of a multinational corporation? Sometimes I wonder why I ever decided to bother with politics in the first place.”

“Because you’re a megalomaniac?” Clark supplied. “Where is your wife?”

“She’s on vacation with her parents,” Lex said. “Are you… jealous?”

“What? No!” he exclaimed. “I’m not jealous. I’m angry. You made me a party to adultery.”

Lex sighed and closed his laptop. “I sucked you off in my office. I can hardly see how that makes you a party to much of anything, besides a better blow job than any seventeen year old deserves.”

Clark was silent for a moment. Lex poured a glass of something amber colored and offered it to Clark. He automatically refused.

“You are of legal drinking age now, remember,” Lex said, setting it down in front of Clark anyways and then pouring himself a glass.

“What is this? Brandy? Is this what you were always drinking all the time?” Clark asked, taking a sip and wrinkling his nose.

“Stop being so dramatic,” Lex said, downing his own glass. “I know alcohol doesn’t do shit to you.”

“Lex, how can you have sex with someone you hate so much?”

Lex laughed and poured himself another glass. “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask yourself? You’ve been doing it for years.”

“Years?” Clark blanched. His older self had never found anyone to love and so he had sex with someone he hated? He shook his head. “I have to go.”

Lex smiled and started walking towards him. “I don’t think you want to.”

“What?” Clark asked dumbly, staring at him, and then he got it. Lex’s predatory mode was back and Clark had to admit he looked hot in his slender button-down shirt. “Are you trying to seduce me?”

“Is that a problem?” Lex whispered into his ear.

“You’re marr—“ Before he could get the word out, Lex’s lips were on his. They were gentle and Lex took it much slower than last time. Clark was melting into his kiss by the time Lex’s tongue touched his. Blood was pooling to his groin and Lex angled his hip in just the right way—oh. Clark clutched at Lex. He couldn’t help it. He was unsteady standing on his own. And Lex’s back was so lean and muscular. He wanted to touch him all over.

“Follow me,” Lex said, and led him through rooms Clark barely even saw. They were in a bedroom and Lex pulled away to unbutton his shirt. There was a reason this was wrong, Clark desperately tried to remind himself. Lex was amoral and ruthless and married. Lex was—kissing him again. And cupping his groin and taking off Clark’s shirt and Clark was—lost.

 

More days passed. It was getting harder to ignore the cries for help or to not feel guilty when yet another news story came out about the increasing crime rate. Lex had been giving him a warning the other day when he told him about the pictures of his ‘indiscriminate use of powers’, but Clark couldn’t stop himself from helping out when he could. He just tried to be more subtle about it.

Lois still brought him coffee in the morning and he was getting used to drinking it black. It was getting easier to fake it in the newsroom. He knew more names now and since reading all the back issues of the Planet online he felt he had a pretty good grasp of the past fifteen years. He even wrote a few articles himself, and it was kind of cool to see his words in print in a real newspaper.

He tried to keep his mind off of Lex, but it seemed the harder he tried, the more difficult it was. Lex had been an unattainably fantasy in high school – one he was almost more scared of attaining than not. And now that he’d had his lips on his, touched his dick, felt him naked pressed up against him… he felt like he couldn’t go back to wanting vaguely from afar. He knew now what it was like and he wanted more.

But Lex was married. And though he tried to tell himself that it didn’t really count because it was Lex and Lex’s marriages never lasted long anyways, he knew it was wrong.

 

“You shouldn’t do that. Someone will catch you,” Lex said as Clark stepped through the open window into his penthouse.

“I was flying at superspeed,” Clark said. “No one could see me.”

“We all make mistakes,” Lex set down his cell phone, which seemed complicated enough to be a computer in and of itself. “One instant hovering too long, a turn not taken at quite enough speed…”

“You left the window open,” Clark pointed out.

Lex silenced him with a hard kiss, but Clark was bolder this time. He knew what he wanted. They tore each other’s clothes off, stumbling through the apartment to Lex’s bedroom. And they were on the bed and Lex was sucking him, and then fucking him. And it was better than last time, Clark thought when they were done and lying panting, side-by-side. Would it always be like this? Would each time feel like the best ever? But as he thought that he realized he couldn’t think like that. There wouldn’t be a next time. There couldn’t be.

When he said as much aloud, Lex leveled him a steely glare. “I think I like your older version more,” he said. “He talks less and fucks better.”

Clark drew away, stung. But Lex followed, and straddled, pinning him to the mattress. Clark could push him off, of course, but he didn’t.

“Tell me,” Lex said, pinching Clark’s nipple beyond what for a human would have been the point of pain. “When you’re seventeen and you listen to me ranting on and on about what great friends we’re going to be, what are you thinking? Are you thinking the whole time what a foolish idiot I am for thinking I could ever be good enough for you? That I could ever measure up?”

Clark opened his mouth to respond but Lex continued,

“Because I tried for years, you know. To measure up to the standards your seventeen-year-old self had set for me. And you know what I realized? You would never let me meet them. You were always going to set the bar higher and higher and play me like I was a dog doing tricks.”

“Lex—“

“No.” Lex commanded, pushing himself up off Clark. “Go.”

 

The next time Clark came, the window was closed and through the walls of the penthouse he could see Lex and his wife eating dinner. He forgot himself for a moment and hovered, watching them. They were eating side-by-side and talking in low murmurs like couples do. He heard a siren somewhere below and a call for help and though he knew he couldn’t go to them, it made him remember where he was and why he shouldn’t be flying in plain view in Metropolis.

He went home and spent the night digging up phone numbers of his high school friends. He called Chloe, who said something rude and hung up on him. Lana, who sounded confused and distant in Paris. And Pete, who barely seemed to recognize him and chatted about high school as if everything had been normal.

 

Clark would have to work on Christmas (he’d been informed that it was his ‘turn’), and Lois was pressing him to investigate the illegal underground labs LexCorp was rumored to have re-opened after Superman’s demise. But for now, Clark was spending Christmas Eve with his mother.

Martha had cooked a small feast – a small ham, cranberries, mashed potatoes, green beans and, of course, corn. Clark ate with abandon, more interested in the comfort the familiar food gave him that needing the nourishment. Martha seemed happy he appreciated it.

“I miss Dad,” he blurted out, and then remembered himself. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—“

“It’s okay, honey,” she said kindly, dishing out more potatoes. “I’ve had eight years to get used to him being gone and I still miss him. You’ve only had a few weeks.”

“I just left so quickly. We all had dinner, and then I went out for a run. When I got back, you were both asleep and I just never saw him again.” He put down his fork. “I curse myself every day for telling the A.I. to send me into the future. With one sentence, I lost my father and thirteen years of my life.”

“You didn’t know,” she insisted. “We all say things we don’t mean and don’t expect to come true. And who knows? Maybe you’ll find a way back.”

“I can’t count on that. Actually, I’ve been thinking about that,” Clark said. “If I’m going to be staying here in 2016, there’s something I need to do.”

 

He stood in front of the mirror in his teenage bedroom, staring critically at his reflection. “Does it have to be skin-tight?” he asked.

“It was traditional Kryptonian dress,” Martha explained.

“Yeah, I know. I read the interview where he said that.” He stared at himself some more. He did look taller, more authoritative. It was nice to get to take the glasses off, too.

“Honey, I hate to ask this, but are you sure? It’s not going to be easy to change your mind.”

Clark nodded seriously. “I’m sure. All I’ve seen since I’ve been here is a world without Superman and it’s like there’s a hole in it. I can’t stand to hear the cries anymore and do nothing.” He turned to his mother and squared his shoulders. “I know my life would be simpler if I didn’t do this, but I don’t think I have a choice. This is bigger than me. When you can do a great amount of good, maybe you don’t have a right to turn your back on that.”

 

On his way into Metropolis the next morning he heard a ringing in his ears. It got louder as he flew. It was almost painful. When he got into the city, he followed its source. When it led him to LexCorp Towers, he realized he should have guessed as much. The window on the 99th floor was open for him.

“You can turn that off now,” he said irritably, touching down on the carpet.

“It took you longer than I expected.” Lex turned around from his desk and took in Clark’s change of clothing. “You decided to put the cape back on.”

“I know you can’t understand,” Clark said, a bit defensive. “But this is something I have to do.”

“This will come as a surprise to you.” Lex stood up. “But I always understood. Better than you could imagine. Follow me.”

“What are we doing?” he asked suspiciously.

“I’m giving you your Christmas present.”

 

Lex explained on the plane. “You’ve heard of the possibility of infinite worlds. Each one is a splinter created from every decision made, each movement of an electron. The A.I. didn’t send you into the future. It sent you into another dimension. Your A.I. here had no memory of the event and didn’t know where to send you back.”

“But you can,” Clark said. He was seated across from Lex, long spandex-clad legs folded in front of him. It was a good thing he could fly by himself. He was too tall to comfortably ride in a plane – even if it was Lex’s private jet.

“I have some experience in sending things across dimensions. It just took me some time to adjust the algorithm to do a backtrace, but now all I have to do is do the trace, feed the data to the A.I. and it can send you back where you came from.”

 

Inside the fortress, Lex had led them to a series of complicated-looking control panels. He’d spoken to the A.I. a bit, using jargon completely foreign to Clark, and then pulled out a small gadget. It looked like a metal detector. He pointed it at Clark and then hooked it into the A.I. and uploaded the data.

“Data received,” the A.I. said. “Beginning processing.”

Lex was wearing a hat and a heavy fur parka. It was strange to see him so bundled up. Clark felt self-conscious in his Superman uniform.

“Processing at twenty-five percent.”

“The A.I.’s an incredible computer,” Lex said conversationally. “It would take the most advanced computers LexCorp has at least a month to process this data. The computers from your time wouldn’t have the memory to even begin. And she’s going to do it in under five minutes.”

“Processing at fifty percent.”

Clark leaned in to kiss him. He didn’t feel the cold in the air but he felt it on Lex’s lips.

“Processing at seventy-five percent.”

In the kiss was everything. Waking up in Lex’s bed, Lex forceful kiss in the office, seduction and sex, pleasure and pain. Lex announcing in full irony to Metropolis that Superman lived on.

“Processing completed. Prepare for trans-dimensional travel in five seconds.”

“Four.”

“It’s going to work. I’m going home.” Clark grinned as Lex stepped away.

“Three.”

Lex just watched. The bare light of the arctic highlighted the angles of his face and he looked colder and older than ever.

“Two.”

* * *

 

“One.”

Clark woke up in his own bed. Startled with a sense of déjà vu, he glanced around to make sure there wasn’t else in the bed. His alarm clock, on his nightstand, in his room, read 6:46 AM.

He ran to the mirror and touched his face. He was seventeen again, in flannel boxers and an old Smallville High t-shirt. Last night, he’d looked into this same mirror and saw Superman. He did his best authoritative face and then grinned. He wouldn’t be intimidating anyone with that. Things were back to normal.

He got dressed and ran down to the barn where his father was moving piles of hay. He caught him in a tight hug, still grinning.

“Clark,” his father said, looking a little disturbed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Clark said. “I’m just happy to see you.”

“Ok, what do you want?”

“Nothing! Come on, I smell pancakes for breakfast.”

 

Clark stopped by the mansion after school and the housekeeper led him to Lex’s office. Lex looked a lot younger now. He glanced at his lips and felt a surge of warmth remembering what they felt like on his. He wondered if he’d feel that again.

“Clark,” Lex said. “Two days in a row. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

“Have you ever realized that you’ve been wrong about something?” Clark asked, sitting down across the desk.

“Once or twice,” Lex said dryly and closed his laptop.

“And that one wrong thing made a whole lot of other things go wrong?” Clark continued. “But then somehow you get a chance to fix it and even though you’re not sure that it’ll work, you know that you want to do things differently this time?”

“What are you trying to say, Clark?”

“That I have a lot to tell you.”

 

Back in 2016

“Luthor.”

Lex glanced over at the figure lying prone on the bed of ice. “Ah, so you’re finally awake.”

Clark narrowed his eyes as he sat up and took in his surroundings. “Is this a bad case of déjà vu or am I back in the Fortress with you? What did you do to me this time?”

“This time, Kent, you can only blame yourself. Quite literally.” A sudden impact against the cold wall knocked the wind out of him and grip around his throat made him gasp for the air back. 

“What. Did. You. Do.” Clark’s dark eyes took up his whole field of vision.

“You know I like it… rough,” he managed to get out. “But perhaps I could better explain with… some oxygen?”

Clark reluctantly released him and Lex massaged his battered throat. If he’d been a normal man, his windpipe would have been irreparably damaged. As it was, he might have bruises for a couple hours.

“Talk. Now.”

And so Lex told him a rather selective version of the story.

“You mean I’ve lost three weeks of my life?” Clark said, looking like he wanted to hit someone. Lex was all too aware he was the only convenient target.

“Why should these three matter so much to you? Correct me if I’m wrong, Kent, but a couple months ago you were quite eager to throw away all the weeks of your life. If I’d known summoning that demon was some kind of misguided suicide attempt, I would have--” 

“You would have what? Not botched it up for me?” Clark glared. “I suppose I should be thanking you now, too, for sending young Clark away and giving me my life back.”

Lex smirked. “Merry Christmas, Superman.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the Under Mistletoe Holiday Challenge, Day 6 Romantic Movie Week ("13 Going on 30")


End file.
